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Scrubby trees conceal the entrance. A sloping timber passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. There is a operating ward, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. Within a break area with a laundry appliance and hot water heater, doctors keep an eye on a screen. It shows the movements of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Medical personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a monitor displaying Russian suicide and surveillance drones in the region.

Welcome to the nation's secret underground medical facility. This center opened in August and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “We are six meters under the earth. This is the safest method of providing help to our wounded soldiers. And it keeps healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Others can move on their own. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which drop explosives with deadly accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal bullet injuries. It’s an age of drones and a new type of war,” the surgeon said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for treating wounded troops in the eastern region.

During one day recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the facility. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, said an first-person view drone blast had torn a minor wound in his limb. “War is horrific. My comrade next to me, Vasyl, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the Russians released a another grenade on him.” He continued: “All structures in the village is demolished. We see UAVs all around and bodies. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his squad endured over a month in a forest area close to Pokrovsk, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their position was on foot. All supplies came by drone: food and drinking water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse gave him fresh non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale jeans.

The soldier, 28, said a FPV aerial device ripped a small hole in his leg.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old a serviceman, recounted a drone blast had resulted in a head injury. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation any feeling or hear anything,” he explained. “I believe I was lucky to remain alive. My cousin has been killed. We face ongoing detonations.” A construction worker employed in a neighboring country, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to serve days before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the upper body. He groaned as medical staff laid him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and treated his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he used a mobile phone to call his sister. “A piece of mortar struck me. It was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he told her. What were his plans now? “To get better. This may require a several months. Subsequently, to return to my unit. Our forces must protect our country,” he affirmed.

Medical staff treat the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has consistently targeted hospitals, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. According to international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and granular material placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, intends to erect 20 units in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically essential for saving the survival of our armed forces and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “most ambitious and challenging” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

The surgeon, explained certain wounded personnel had to endure delays many hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who came at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. The soldier's bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe surgeries? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he remarked.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The transport was stationed beneath a bush. He and the other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground hospital staff paused for rest. The hospital’s orange feline, Vasilevs, padded toward the entrance to await the incoming patients. “We are open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”